Phalnax vs. PhalanxII

[ManaKing]

better by 1 point, or equal. depending on where exactly your enhancing skill ends up. i'd say the more important factor is which do you wanna tie up. 5 merits, or your subjob?

Exactly. Just what I was thinking.

[Kristal]

Phalanx II offers +1 minute duration and is castable on others. That's the difference.

RDM merits, and group 2 merits in particular, have been designed VERY poorly. No other job is given crippleware that requires 5/5 merits to bring it up to par+1 with a previous tier spell, and no other job has to CHOOSE what spells/abilities to take.

[Limar]

no other job has to CHOOSE what spells/abilities to take.

Black Mage?

[Ordain]

The general consensus I recall from before was you wanted either Paralyze 2, Dia 3, or Phalanx 2.

I too am trying to decide how to go about this. I was originally going to go Paralyze 2 and Phalanx 2. But if the only benefit is casting on others and a one minute duration, then I'm half tempted to drop it for Dia 3.

[Alukat]

get a rdm friend, one of u can get paralyze II & phalanx II and the other can get slow II & dia III. so u got all covered.

pretty senselss if 90% of the rdms have slow II + paralyze II merited and they just overlap in pts and have no extra benefits.

teamplay

[saevel]

IDK I went with 5/5 Slow II, 2/3 Dia III, 3/5 Phalanx II.

Reasoning is,
Paralyze II is useless, anything you'd want to land it on would be immune or nearly immune anyway. This is why I removed my merits from Paralyze II. Bio III is useless outside of /SCH solo's, at 75 it was all the rage amongst soloists because it could knock off a few min from their running in circles time. Blind II is also useless unless your fighting a weak NM with a NIN or THF evasion tank. A monster going from 150% hit rate to 135% hit rate will still be capped at 80%, it makes no actual difference (parses have shown this). Biggest more dangerous NM's simply have astronomical accuracy.

This leaves few choices.
Full Slow II because it will make the most difference the most often, especially stacked with Saboteur in longer fights. I've seen very few NM's that are resistant to Slow, other then the Earth / Wind based ones it lands on the rest pretty consistently. Dia III is 15% def down to the target or 17.6% attack up to all your melee's, against the super NM's this is priceless right after procing red when you want to kill it ASAP. And it also overwrites the Bio II all those pesky BLM's and DRK's like to constantly cast on NM's. Only its duration is increased by merits so I figure 60s should be long enough for whatever it is you need to do, to be done. Plus you can spam Dia III if your meleeing and reap the rewards yourself. Then the rest I dumped into Phalanx II as a useful buff to have in my arsenal. I'm usually /SCH so I tend to aoe Phalanx 1 with 420+ skill. If I'm using that stratagem for other things then I'll resort to Phalanx II on key people.